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Does Gun Control Reduce Violent
Crime?
A Comparison of New York City and Chicago
The University of Akron
Bricey Kepnes (blk43), Hayley Roppel (hrr10), Ryan Bayonnet (rmb79), Brandon
Hennen (beh14), & Diego Hernandez (dsh23)
Abstract: In our comparison of New York City and Chicago, we hoped to find a correlation
between violence crime rates and gun control laws. Initially, our group assumed that less guns
would result in less crime. Throughout our research we then found many studies that said
allowing guns would actually reduce crime. Once the data was obtained and the SAS program
was utilized, we found that there was no correlation between New York City and Chicago with
the exception of the two laws.
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Introduction: As a group we are curious as to see if there is a relationship between gun control
and violence. We were very interested in the laws and regulations on gun control and the effect
they have on the population. Gun control is a highly debated subject upon legislators, public
officials, and the media.
Hypothesis:
We hypothesize that states with strict gun policies would be subject to less violent crimes. In
particular, we will analyze two big cities in the U.S.: New York City, NY and Chicago, IL,
whose laws for gun control are vastly different.
Economic Model:
In our economic analysis we will establish four variables:
• Current state law on gun control/ ownership (Variable: law)
• Gun related deaths in each big city (Variable: gundeath)
• Number of violent crimes per city reported by the FBI (Variable: violent)
• Population of city (Variable: pop)
• Gun Homocides (Variable: gunhom)
• In SAS (Chicago counties [2] and New York boroughs [5] for t-tests)
Theoretical Overview: We hope to compare the current state law and gun related deaths in each
city and find that gun related deaths are lower in Chicago; a state that does not allow concealed
carrying of guns. Next we plan to compare the percentage of violent crimes per city and the
population to find which city is more dangerous in general.
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State Gun Control Laws:
New York City, NY (Variable: law)
“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to
keep and bear arms cannot be infringed.”
Article 2, Section 4 of the New York Civil Rights Law
New york is considered a “may-issue” statei. In New York City it is required that those who
wish to bear arms must have a permit to purchase, register, or carry a firearm (New York 2011).
Chicago, IL (Variable: law)
“Subject only to the police power, the right of the individual citizen to keep and bear arms shall
not be infringed.”
Section 22, Article I of the Illinois Bill of Rights.4
Illinois is considered a “no-issue” stateii. In Chicago it is required that those who wish to own a
firearm may do so given that: they have a permit to purchase (FOID required), register, or carry a
rifle or shotgun. In no instances can a citizen carry a concealed handgun (Illinois 2012).
Table 1
City
Total Firearm
Deaths (2006-2007)
(Variable:
gundeath)
684
Rate per 100,000 Citizens (Adjusted to
2000 population amount)
New York City, New
4.0
York (five boroughs)
City of Chicago, Illinois
700
11.6
Violence-Related Firearm Deaths Among Residents of Metropolitan Areas and Cities
(Accessed on November 13, 2012)
In Table 1, we were able to see that New York City and the City of Chicago have the same
amount of firearm deaths in the years of 2006-2007. However, when adjusted to the population
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in 2000 (the last available census data at the time this paper was written) it is easy to see that
Chicago’s death rate from firearms is about 3 times higher than New York City’s (Kegler et. al
2011).
Table 2
Offenses Known to Law Enforcement by City, 2011
Violent
Murder and
crime
(Variable: nonnegligent
Aggravated
City
Population
violent)
manslaughter Robbery
assault
New York
8,211,875
50,117
515
19,773
29,829
Chicago
2,703,713
26,814
431
13,975
12,408
Offenses Known to Law Enforcement: Illinois & New York
(Accessed on November 13, 2012)
When searching for data, we went to the FBI to find a data set called “Offenses Known to Law
Enforcement”. Which detailed both violent crime and property crime (Table 2). We chose both
sets from NYC and Chicago and when comparing them side by side saw that New York had
double the crime than Chicago. However, Chicago is a third of the size of New York. Also,
Chicago did not report the forcible rape amount for their city so we had to expunge that from the
data set and stick to three crimes instead of four (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2011).
Literature Review
In this portion of the essay, we are attempting to review the critical points of current knowledge
and substantial findings in the research field of gun laws compared to crime rates. This has been
a much discussed topic in the past with a very split audience. A study by Harvard University, in
support with the American Civil Rights Union produced an article stating, “Gun Control is
Counterproductive”. In this article they took a look at both domestic and European gun laws in
comparison with murder rates in these respective countries. In this article they were able to
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determine that nations with the most stringent anti-gun laws generally have higher murder rates
than those countries that do no have stringent gun control laws. In this study they focused on
nine European nations with the lowest gun ownership and concluded that the murder rate was
three times higher than the nine nations with the highest rates of gun ownership. Therefore
concluding that a higher rate of gun control (less strict laws) will result in lower crime rates.
Many people disagree with this argument. The obvious argument against this claim is
that gun control does reduce crime, most reports state that more hand guns in circulation equal
more violent crime. Typical arguments state that owning a handgun increases your risk of being
killed and that keeping guns out of the hands of criminals can prevent violent crime. This
argument is supported by “The Chicago Journal of Legal Studies” found in JSTOR. In the years
after cities adopted the right to-carry laws, homicide rates increased by close to 3% in the five
years before and after. There was surprising data when the homicide rates increased by 4.65
times from the year directly before and after the law change.
Using these two arguments sets us up to use the data we found to determine if gun control
is really beneficial or detrimental to society. In our experiment we will look at two domestic,
large cities. These being Chicago, which has very stringent, gun laws, and New York City,
whose gun control laws are more relaxed. For these two cities we used violence rates found on
the FBI website and compared these violence rates to the total population of each city found
through the U.S. Census Bureau. Using the data from these two sources we are hoping to find
the per capita violence rate in both the city with stringent gun laws (Chicago) and the city with
lenient gun laws (New York City) and determine which firearm policy is more viable.
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Table 3
Year
2007
2009
Population
(Variable:
pop)
5,285,107
Violent
crimes
VCR per
100,000
126,928
723
City
Chicago
Counties
Cook,
Dupage
Gun homicides:
(Variable:gunhom)
Gun
Law
1420
May
own
but
NO
CCW
at all
Bronx,
Manhattan
2007
New
, Queens,
Stricte
8,202,103 137,147
1672
929
York
Staten
st state
2009
Isle,
Brooklyn
County Health Rankings and Roadmaps by County
(Accessed on November 14, 2012)
In Table 3, we describe both of our population and gun homicide variables. Here, we have the
counties that will be utilized and represented through SAS. Both cities have been broken down
into the counties/boroughs that exist within each large city in order to obtain more accurate data.
The above statistics have been used to compile statistics from SAS which are represented in
tables 4 and 5 below.
Table 4
Location
Chicago
(0)
New York
(1)
Difference
Between
Locations
(0-1)
Counties /
Boroughs
DuPage Cook (2)
Brooklyn –
Queens –
Bronx –
Manhattan
– Staten
Island (5)
Mean
Standard
Error
298.2
Minimum
Maximum
636.8
Standard
Deviation
421.7
338.6
934.9
562.3
562.3
99.0135
288.2
871.4
74.46
273.4
228.8
Table Generated in SA
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Table 5
Method
Variances
Pooled
Equal
Degress of
t-Value
Freedom
5
0.33
Table Generated in SAS
Pr>Itl
0.7580
Looking back at our data represented in SAS we were able to view our data in its final
light. With the mean from our violent crime statistic in Chicago being almost 11% higher than
the mean in New York, it seemed like there would be significant data confirming that our claim
in our theoretical overview would be significant. That was not the case. We found that with the
data we had collected there was insignificant evidence.
There was no correlation found for the two cities with different gun control laws. Each
city had similar yet quite different control on guns, and was located in Midwest metropolitan
areas. This was concluded in the P-value that SAS generated. (0.7580>.05), showing we had
not found significant evidence.
Conclusion: With the data we had recently collected we were surprised to find that the laws
really had no impact on each of the cities. Because of this, we realize that this is a much more
complex topic than we had originally anticipated it to be. We now know that if we were to
repeat this paper that we should maybe compare other variables, or compare states rather than
cities for a larger amount of data.
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Bibliography
Black, Dan, and Daniel Nagin. "Do Right‐to‐Carry Laws Deter Violent Crime?." The University
of Chicago Law School. Chicago Journals, n.d. Web. 14 Nov 2012.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/10.1086/468019.pdf?acceptTC=true>.
"2012 Cook, Illinois Violent Crime Rate." County Health Rankings and Roadmaps. University
of Wisconsin. Web. 14 Nov 2012.
<http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/illinois/cook/43>.
"Harvard Study: Gun Control Is Counterproductive." American Civil Rights Union. N.p., n.d.
Web. 14 Nov 2012.
<http://theacru.org/acru/harvard_study_gun_control_is_counterproductive/>.
"Illinois." National Rifle Association of America.: Institute for Legislative Action. National Rifle
Association of America, 10 2012. Web. 12 Nov 2012. <http://www.nraila.org/gunlaws/state-laws/illinois.aspx;.
Kegler, Scott, Joseph Annest, Marcie-jo Kresnow, and James Mercy. United States. Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. Violence-Related Firearm Deaths Among Residents of
Metropolitan Areas and Cities. 2011. Web.
<http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6018a1.htm>.
"New York." National Rifle Association of America.: Institute for Legislative Action. National
Rifle Association of America, 5 2011. Web. 12 Nov 2012. <http://www.nraila.org/gunlaws/state-laws/new-york.asp&xgt;.
United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Offenses Known to Law Enforcement: Illinois.
2011. Web. <http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-theu.s.2011/tables/table8statecuts/table_8_offenses_known_to_law_enforcement_illinois_by
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United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Offenses Known to Law Enforcement: New York.
2011. Web. <http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-theu.s.2011/tables/table8statecuts/table_8_offenses_known_to_law_enforcement_new_york
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Endnotes
Carrying a concealed weapon is prohibited entirely. A Firearms Owner’s Identification Card
(FOID) is required for purchase (National Rifle Association of America: Institute for Legislative
Action 2012).
ii A license is needed to possess a handgun. Application is made to the licensing officer of the
city or county where the applicant resides, is principally employed, or where his principal place
of business as a merchant or storekeeper is located. An alien may obtain a pistol license if he or
she meets these requirements. The determination whether to grant the license is completely
within the discretion of the licensing officer. However, the licensing officer must state
specifically and concisely in writing the reasons for a denial. A denial can only be overturned in
court if the denial is shown to be arbitrary and capricious (National Rifle Association of
America: Institute for Legislative Action 2011).
i